Wild Heart (16 page)

"Okay," he said finally, the first to draw away. She loved it when he said okay—when he sounded like Sam. "If you can't talk, it's all right, Sydney. You can tell me what to do without words." As if to test her, he put his hands on the sides of her face and slowly, hesitantly, slid his fingers into her hair. Now was the time to pull gently away, to send him the kind, wordless message that this was nice but it wasn't allowed. Instead she closed her eyes. What was it about the way Michael touched her sometimes that made it so much easier to give in than take a stand? She felt his breath, then his lips on her cheek in the slightest of kisses, and she thought,
Oh, this is allowed. This is very much allowed.
How natural it would be to turn her head now, ever so slightly, so that their mouths could kiss.

But he drew away again, and she opened her eyes to find him smiling at her. "There's a bird—I don't know its name, I haven't found it in the books yet. The male picks the female he wants to mate with, and then he courts her. At first she doesn't like it. He brings her gifts, special bugs he finds just for her, but she won't eat them."

She folded her arms. Easy to see where this story was leading.

"He has a dance he does for her, and she likes that. She lets him touch her with his beak while he does the dance, not much but a little. It's like kissing."

"Mm hm."

"It takes a long time, but he doesn't give up. Because he really wants her. He has to have her. And she's not pretending—she really doesn't want him. At first."

"What finally changes her mind? Bigger, better bugs?"

"No." His smile turned doubtful. "I don't know, I'm not sure. I think it's that he doesn't stop. He just keeps trying. Maybe ..." He shot her a sly glance from under his lashes. "Maybe she takes pity on him."

She laughed, and he laughed with her, his face delighted and self-conscious. "So," she said as they began to walk back toward the path and home. "The moral of the story is that persistence pays off in the end, is that it?"

It felt right when he caught her hand and swung it between them as they walked. "Persistence," he repeated, trying the word out. He sent her another sideways look, and this one was downright crafty. "Yes, that's the secret of the story. That's the moral. Persistence pays."

Chapter 9

“Am I dreaming or are you still here? When the hell do you ever sleep?"

"It's morning," Michael explained, stepping back from the bed and, out of politeness, not wrinkling his nose. Philip had that nasty, sweet smell that O'Fallon used to have; it meant he'd drunk too much whiskey the night before. Michael knew this for a fact, because he'd helped put Philip to bed last night when he'd been too drunk to do it himself. "It's almost afternoon, in fact. You said to wake you up because your aunt would have your head if you missed lunch again."
Have your head
was just an expression, though; even the aunt wouldn't really cut someone's head off.

Philip pushed back the covers and sat up, groaning and running his tongue over his teeth. His legs hung over the side of the bed, bare under the long shirt he wore to sleep in. Sometimes he wore a cap, too, and when he got ready for bed he put on a soft robe over the shirt and cloth slippers on his feet. His bed had four pillows, two white sheets, blankets at the bottom, a colored quilt, a feather mattress with springs under it, and a tent thing on top called a canopy. Michael could never get over how many soft objects people needed to have on or under or over them just to go to sleep.

He stood at the foot of the bed while Philip got up and shuffled over to the washstand. He poured water from the pitcher into the bowl, stuck his hands in, bent over, and splashed the water on his face and neck and hair, making loud, pained noises the whole time. "Towel," he said with his eyes closed, searching for it with one hand. Michael spied it on the floor, where Philip had thrown it last night, picked it up, and handed it to him. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning his shoulder against the tall wooden post. Watching Philip get dressed in the morning taught him something new every day. He could tie a Windsor knot in his necktie now, and sharpen a razor on a leather strop. He knew how to part his hair neatly on the left side (where Sydney said it "parted naturally"), clean his teeth with sweet powder and a brush, and cut his fingernails with a miniature pair of scissors. Philip had given him some of his old clothes, and he was learning what went with what. You couldn't wear a frock coat in the morning, and even if it was gray you could only wear it with black trousers. You could wear a morning coat all day and even at night, but only if it was black. You could wear a lounge suit with a colored shirt and a white collar, but only a white shirt with a frock or a morning coat. If you were a "sporty fellow" you might wear a striped or a checked lounge suit, but otherwise you were better off "sticking with solids." Silk lapels were "de rigeur," which was French, and creases in your trousers were "all the go," which was slang. Philip put Ricard's Brilliantine on his hair and Merchant's Lime and Spice Cologne for Men on his face, but here Michael drew the line. They smelled wrong to him, false, more like medicine than a man.

"Do you have a hangover?" he asked, watching Philip rummage through his wardrobe for what he was going to wear today. He had a man named Martin who usually helped him get dressed, but this was Martin's day off.

"How clever of you, Michael. You've got those razor-sharp senses working this morning, I see."

Philip talked like that sometimes, grumpy as an old bear, but Michael had learned it didn't mean anything. "What does a hangover feel like?" he asked.

"Feels like almighty hell."

"Yes, but how?"

Philip threw off his nightshirt and stood there naked, staring blankly into his wardrobe. His body was perfectly white and unscarred, and Michael couldn't help envying him. "How does it feel? My head's pounding, my stomach's rolling. My mouth tastes like a privy. My brain isn't working, and I think I did something to my neck. Anything else you want to know?"

"Yes. Why do you drink when you know it makes you sick in the morning?"

Philip pretended to tear out his hair. "Will you please shut up? If you were any sort of friend you'd refrain from asking stupid questions this early in the morning. At least until I get my bearings."

Michael laughed, because it made him happy to know that Philip thought they were friends. He shut up, and just wandered around the room looking at things while Philip put his clothes on, shaved, brushed his hair, trimmed his mustache, and stared at himself in the long mirror. By the time he pinched off a flower in the vase on his mantel and stuck it in his buttonhole, Michael figured he had his bearings and it was all right to talk.

"What's it like going to college? What will you be when it's over?"

"Damned if I know."

"Don't you like it?"

"I hate it. I'm flunking out."

"Why? You mean you're failing?"

Philip wound his watch, slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, and flopped down on top of his bed. He put his hands behind his head and crossed his feel, and with his eyes closed he said, "Failing. That's it, Mike. I'm failing."

"Mick."

"What? Say again?"

A gruff voice. Wrinkled face, white whiskers.
Want to ride up here wi' me, young Mick?
Dry, scratchy hand reaching down, pulling him up into the high seat of a coach.

That was all; the memory faded, wouldn't go any farther.

"That's what somebody called me. Mick, not Mike. A nickname."

Philip sat up on his elbows. "Do you remember something?"

"Just that. A man. I think he was . . . No, I don't know." It was just out of his grasp, like smoke drifting away.

"Sydney's detective hasn't found anything yet. It's early, though. Probably can't expect anything this soon."

"What? Sydney's what?"

"Oh, hell. You didn't know." He rubbed his face with his hands. "I guess she didn't tell you so you couldn't be disappointed."

"Tell me what?"

Philip sighed. "She hired a detective. That's somebody you pay to find things out, investigate things for you. Fellow's name is Higgins. Sydney gave him your name and your history, what we know of it, and told him to find out who you are and where you came from."

Michael sat down at the foot of the bed slowly. "She did this? For me?"

Philip nodded. "You can't remember anything about the shipwreck at all?"

"Shipwreck." Something was wrong with that word, but he wasn't sure what. "No, I can't remember." Sydney had hired a detective to find out who he was. It might mean she wanted to get rid of him, but he didn't think so. He thought it meant she cared about him.

He said, "Are you going to get married soon?"

"Am I what?" Philip's eyes popped open. "What kind of a question is that?"

Michael ducked his head; he'd said something wrong. "If you want to mate with a woman, you have to marry," he explained shyly. "So ... do you want to mate?"

Philip looked amazed, as if Michael had told him something he didn't know. But how could he not know
thatl
Then he started to laugh. He put his hands on his temples and groaned. "Oh God, it hurts. Don't make me laugh."

"What's funny?"

Philip just shook his head.

"Tell me. Explain it."

"Oh, God," he said again. He sat up and put his feet on the floor. "I don't know who you've been talking to, but that's not exactly the way it works. Not for men, anyway." He rubbed his cheeks and plucked at his mustache; he looked uncomfortable and amused at the same time. "I didn't expect to have to have this conversation with anybody but Sam."

Michael turned away, embarrassed. He was still a child in the world of men, and whenever he started to feel confident about himself, something always happened to remind him of it.

"Listen," Philip said kindly, "it's really not that complicated. You understand about—mating and all that?"

Not really. "I understand what happens."

"Well, that's a start. We call it—well, we call it a lot of things, but 'making love' is one of the nicest, I always think. It's usually a euphemism, but that's what makes it acceptable in polite company. Following me?"

"No."

"Ha." He put his hands on his knees and started pinching the crease in his trousers. "The thing is, sex is different for men than it is for women. We can have it before we get married, but they can't."

"Who do we have it with?"

"Aha. Leaped right on that one, didn't you? The ostensible flaw in the system. Well, my boy, we have it with any woman who'll let us, that's who. Usually they're not so-called
respectable
girls, not our
sort,
you know. But not always. No indeed, not always. In fact, you'd be amazed."

Michael pondered that for a while. "So we do it in secret?"

"Absolutely."

"So the respectable girls won't know?"

"Now you've got it."

"Do all men do it?"

"No. Most, though. Some even do it after they're married. Which is called infidelity—not being faithful.

It's frowned upon, but done anyway. Definitely done anyway. Well!" He stood up, looking relieved. "That's over, time for lunch."

"Do women like to make love with us?"

"Hm? Some do. It depends on how good we are at it. But we
always
like making love to
them.
That's one of the fundamental distinctions between the sexes."

"Are you joking now?"

"Not a bit. Aren't you hungry? Come on, I'm starving."

"If Sydney is a respectable girl but she doesn't have a husband, how can she make love?"

Philip stopped halfway to the door and turned around. For a long time he just stared, with a look on his face that was surprised at first, then sad. "She can't," he said in a quiet voice.

Michael stared back at him, wanting the answer to be different. "She can't?"

"No. She can't." No joking, no wry tone of voice now. Just the three words, flat and heavy as stones. "Come on, Mick, let's go have lunch. Come on, there's a good lad. Afterward, I'll give you a tennis lesson."

* * * * *

Sydney looked beautiful. She had on a yellow dress with a white flower at the breast, and she had yellow ribbons in her hair, curling through it like vines. He smiled at her across the dining room table, and everything Philip had just told him flew out of his head as soon as she smiled back.

But she was sitting next to West. West came to the house all the time, almost every day; he might as well still be living here.
I
know Charles
—
we were practically engaged,
she'd said that time they'd quarreled about Inger. Michael scowled at him, hating his smell, sharp and artificial, sickeningly sweet. Didn't she smell it? How could she stand it?

Dr. Winter was talking about the new project he and West were working on. Something about "the evolution of reciprocal altruism" and whether is was "in danger of being overwhelmed by the short-term advantages of selfishness." Michael couldn't follow any of it. No one but West looked interested, as usual, but they let him go on. They all liked Dr. Winter, even though he was weak, not the leader. Sydney's eyes softened when she looked at him, the way a mother wolf's softened when she played with her pups.

The maid took away the soup bowls and brought in the salad. Michael had learned to like the sour-tasting sauce they put on it. He even knew which fork to use, without having to sneak a glance at Sydney to make sure. In fact, meals were almost pleasant times these days. Not the stomach-churning trials they used to be, when he lived in fear of committing some awful mistake that would make the aunt glare at him. She'd never
said
anything when he'd eaten potatoes with his spoon or forgotten to cut his meat before he ate it, but she didn't have to. She didn't hate him as much as she used to, he thought, but it was hard to tell. She never talked to him, and hardly ever looked at him.

"Samuel, stop kicking the table."

"Yes, ma'am."

Michael used his napkin to hide behind while he smiled at Sam. Sam grinned back. He had taught Michael the most important lesson of all about dining with the family: how to sneak food you didn't want to Hector. Hector would eat anything, even vegetables, and he was good about not gobbling it under the table and making a lot of noise.

The clock over the sideboard chimed two times.

Sam said, "What time is it, Michael?"

"Twelve-thirty. Half past twelve."

"What's the date?"

"Tuesday, July the fourteenth. Eighteen ninety-three," he added—showing off for Sydney.

Sam looked around at the family proudly. "He can do the times tables up to twelve times twelve. He can do long division."

"He can beat you at chess," Philip threw in.

"He can beat you, too!"

"Samuel, don't shout at the table." The aunt rang a little bell, and the maid came back in to collect the plates.

Next came some kind of meat, hot and smoking and swimming in a brownish broth. The vegetable was peas— the worst kind, almost impossible to sneak to the dog. Michael ate some of the meat and pushed the peas around, hiding them in the gravy. He wondered what was for dessert.